


the best of all my days

by farnear



Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: 'animals' by frank o'hara: a fic, Gen, Middle School, Multi, Pre-Canon, questionable teenage humour, teenage angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 19:06:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11168181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farnear/pseuds/farnear
Summary: Sea shells had a sea voice inside, and the story was, the shells called for the sea because they missed it.





	1. the gravity centre

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was written in january. as such, it doesn't account for characterization and developments of s4. i have very mixed feelings about skam now, but writing it & later editing it with asey was a great fun; it owes a lot to her. the title comes from 'animals' by frank o'hara.

As they drive uphill, a tiny lizard slips under the wheels.

The car is an alfa romeo, Sara’s uncle said. But, he added, they weren’t the age to care. They put their suit-cases and their duffel- bags in the trunk, and they made it to the inside, tired of the beating sun, of the cloudless and painfully blue Italian summer afternoon. Isak couldn’t stop looking at the dark circles on Sara’s uncle bright polo shirt, pathetic reminders of the heat gluing his own tee to his skin.

They sat in a

preschool order: girls with girls, boys with boys. Isak and Jonas, Sara and Eva, and Ingrid. On the plane, Jonas was next to Ingrid – they were gross – and Isak shared with Sara and Eva. Eva  wasn’t any fun and Sara wouldn’t stop smiling at him, little sad, as if he needed her sympathy to get over their break-up. She asked, what Isak had been up to lately. The rest of the flight, he had the headphones on.

But Isak is with Jonas now. Jonas, who is methodically swallowing his spit, because he believes it will stop the ringing in his ears. It’s the air pressure, when the plane drowns quick. Some people get a bad ringing from it. Jonas hasn’t told anyone, but Isak knows. He recognizes the furrow of Jonas’s brows, the focus of the half-closed eyes. Isak glances to the back, to the row where the girls are. Ingrid and Sara are staring at the fashion magazine they bought at the airport. Its glossy pages shine in the violent sun, and Isak has to blink. Eva leans over the window, her head on the elbow, the screen down. She looks back on the washed out asphalt road, and the town below, and the slouched trees.

It is like a cough, not a laughter and not a shout, what Eva does. Then, she says:

‘We roadkilled a lizard.’

Isak turns to see and there it is: on the dusty road, a small crushed skull. They drove right over it.

 

To arrive at the house – or the lake house, as Sara calls it, but they passed the lake, and they passed the town, and they drove uphill, where there is no lake, where there is nothing but dust and dry bushes – to arrive at the house, they need to take a turn from the asphalt road, into a gravel path. The gravel must have been laid long ago, because now there isn’t almost any left, and every movement of the wheels sends a cloud of dust up in the air. They close the windows and it’s suffocating hot. But they still breathe when they see the  house. They see the yellow walls, and the terracotta roof, and the dark window shutters. Isak sighs with relief: window shutters, a border between the room and the sunlight. Behind the house, says Sara’s uncle, there is a garden. It is walled from three sides, and the fourth side comes up to the mountain. There is a garden, and in a garden, there is an empty swimming pool. Be careful not to fall. The house would have been a bed and breakfast, but the filtration system in the pool is off, and the repairs would cost more than expected, - and so, Sara’s uncle shakes his head. But the kitchen is done, and the bathrooms are to use, and they put up a wall on the second floor, to make three bedrooms out of one and a closet. The wall, however, is thin. Isak rubs his neck. There is light beer in the fridge and wine in the cellar, but Sara’s uncle won’t give them a key to the cellar. You’re not the age yet, he says.

Isak doesn’t get it. What does it mean, not to be of the age? Any age? Isak is of some age. He is of age enough.

 

They carry in their suit-cases and their duffel bags, girls’ magazines and Jonas’s guitar. Sara’s uncle offers them a drive back to the town after the sun fades and Ingrid accepts. Jonas is in the kitchen, mouth under the tap. The water is rusty.

‘Isak,’ Ingrid calls, and Isak blinks. He wonders if he should tell her the filtration system if off in the house, too. If he should tell her Jonas is pouring rusty water into his throat and will taste like shit, probably, to kiss. ‘Isak, is it okay if you take the small room? Jonas and I will share,’ she says and blushes, glances to see if the man doesn’t hear. ‘And Eva and Sara can share too, and like, you –‘ You can’t, is what she means. ‘You wouldn’t like to, would you?’ Isak smiles and nods, sure.

‘I don’t mind,’ he says. He doesn’t. A room for his own would be good. He could lock the door and close the window shutters, lie on the bed unmoving. Unseeing in the soft dark, the sunlight shut out.

 

He does it: he puts the duffel bag down, he closes the door, he closes the shutters. He flops on the bed. But there are lines of light on the walls, like strange scratches, because there are there are breaks in the shutters. They aren’t smooth blocks of wood: they aren’t borders, but sieves. Anything would be less of a pain than this uncertain half-light, even the undeniable presence of the blinding sun. There would be a dim pleasure in pushing the shutters wide open, like: when you drop a glass and you know it will shatter after it hits the tiles, then you smile when it does, not because it is good for the glass to shatter, but because you knew it would. He knows the sun will burn him and it would. But he’s too tired and the unused bed is still cold, still a relief. It warms up though, with the heat of Isak’s own body, so he pushes himself up to peel his tee off. He moves – and he sees a movement similar to his, but not his. He turns and knocks his elbow against the bed’s headboard. He yelps, because it fucking hurts, and then squints to see better, and realizes, there is a mirror on the wall. He tries to laugh, but he doesn’t. There’s a hot pulse in his elbow, and it went all pink. It’s like their teacher said the first sex-ed meet in the middle school: you grow and your centre of gravity shifts, and before you catch up, you will stumble on your feet, and knock against everything, and you will drop so many glasses – they will just slip from your hands. You grow and your body changes, it’s like a stranger you need to know again. It was fucking awkward – then, she started on acne and body odour, and it was worse. Isak died inside. He stares into the mirror: his heat-red face, his thin arms, the spot just under his chin he picks any time he’s alone. A stranger. He stares into the mirror: if he dropped it, it would shatter

 

They go back to the town, into the thick of the tourists and the guides and the vendors, the shell-sellers. Sara’s uncle reminds them: the kitchen, the bathrooms, no wine and no water in the pool – and then he drives off, to Milan. They might visit if they like.

‘There’s a train,’ Sara says. ‘It’s like, super cheap. We can go anytime.’

‘I’ve been,’ Jonas says. Ingrid tilts her head, flicks her hair.

‘I don’t care,’ she says. ‘We can go if there’s literally nothing else to do,’ she shrugs.

Eva doesn’t say anything but she rolls her eyes when she catches Isak looking.

They won’t go to Milan. They won’t go to the lake, now. Ingrid says: ‘There’s too many people and I am literally falling on my feet–‘

‘I can carry you, babe.’

Ingrid smiles and lets Jonas kiss her, and Isak wonders if his mouth tastes like rusty water. Or like dust. It can’t be a good kiss. ‘Anyway – I want some ice cream,’ she says when they’re done. They go to an ice cream parlour. There are three others in Isak’s sight and it sets him off. There shouldn’t be four ice cream parlours on the same block.

The town – with the lake, and the tourists, and the ice cream – is like a postcard, and everyone here smiles. There is a mirror on the wall in his room, and when he considered his reflection, he noticed the skin on the top of his nose was reddened. Tomorrow, it will flake. Everyone sees it, in the sharp summer bright. The skin on the top of Jonas’s nose never flakes. The skin on Jonas goes with the sunlight. It’s smooth and not red, not a spot – save for the few pimples – not a spot of red, it’s – like, gold.  

‘Signore?’ He is in the front of the queue.

‘Uh – p – pistachio?’ He hates pistachio, but he forgot all other words. Just wanted anything green. He stands next to Jonas. Chocolate. Isak wonders if Ingrid will kiss him, now. Chocolate is sweet, sweeter than the rusty water, but Ingrid freaks out with the food. Once Jonas kissed her between the bites of a subway sandwich and Ingrid shrieked, and Jonas laughed, and she was mad, and Isak took a picture and put it on snapchat, with a caption. Girlfriends, whatever, blah, blah, blah.

‘Hey,’ Jonas grins at him and Isak grins back. He doesn’t know why. ‘Let’s, like –‘ Jonas takes a look at the parlour, ‘hide,’ he says. ‘They are taking forever, and it’s boring as fuck here.’

‘Sure,’ Isak says and they go from under the arcades where there is a parlour, where there are four parlours, they go into the street, and they take a turn, and a turn. They don’t run, but it is like running – Isak is out of breath. They stop somewhere old, with the old houses and a narrow cobblestone. There are vespas, and pigeons, and the pigeon shit. There is no sunlight, all of it lost on the rooftops. The shadow turns Jonas’ss smile whiter, his eyes – greener.

 

They find them – quick, they find them too quick. It’s easy. The shadow doesn’t last. Back on the road uphill, there  is no shade, but the sun has set, small and red, and the wind is cool on Isak’s skin.

‘This guy asked Ingrid out,’ Sara blurts out.

Next to him, Jonas stops. He straightens – and moves his arms, like – and hooks his thumbs behind the loops of his shorts.

 

‘Oh?’ he looks at Ingrid, who also stops, hand on the hips, the sun in her shades. Isak rolls his eyes, but when he looks at Eva, Eva looks down.

‘Yeah’, Ingrid says, light. ‘Yeah, he did.’

‘And what did you do?’

 

‘Who knows,’ Ingrid smiles and smiles still, when Jonas takes her hand. ‘Don’t get lost next time.’ They stand. With the last of sunset. They don’t face the town below, and they don’t face the lake house above, they stand careless of the road uphill. They hold hands and sway – Jonas lulls Ingrid to a blush and kisses her quick. Isak – and Sara, and Eva – form a triangle, with Jonas and Ingrid at the centre. They stare and not stare, they smile and not smile. Isak stares and doesn’t smile. You grow up and your gravity centre shifts. From a boy to a girl. Your body changes. But Isak isn’t of the age – or he is, and it is just his body that slipped sideways.

 


	2. the voice in the shell

There are photos on facebook. It’s funny – to lie in a sweated tee, with a sweated blanket, his body itching with the dust – and to see the photos of him from yesterday. The sun, the postcard town and he: shades, smile but nothing too much, cool. He considers this person. He looks as if he had a cool life, and knew it. It’s a good look. He carries it well. He likes the photos, and swipes over. There are the girls, lipstick and short tops. There is Jonas – Isak’s thumb hovers over the screen of the phone, he isn’t sure if he has a reason to save the photo. Why not? Friends – have photos of their friends. He can make a meme of it, be chill. He saves it. Then, there is Jonas with Ingrid. She is tilting her head up and he is kissing her on the cheek, and she is smiling, her glance between Jonas and the camera. Isak throws the phone off into the sheets. He forces himself to face the mirror.

He tries to count the flakes on his nose, but he gives up. It’s as if all his skin was to go off, like a lizard’s – but instead of a new skin, shiny and elastic, there would be just a mess of meat and bones. When he goes to the shower, the water is cold and rusty, and he can’t scrub the itch off.

 

‘We need to go get some food from the town,’ Eva says. She was in the kitchen when they all came down. ‘All we have is, like, beer.’

‘Uh, uncle says there are orange trees in the garden, so –‘

‘Orange trees,’ Jonas repeats, a laughter rising.

‘We’re gonna have citrus for all our meals,’ Isak joins in, ‘Or just two out of three?’

‘Man, nobody told me it’s gonna be a –‘

‘A diet camp?’

They lose it. They’re hungry and it’s hot, and it’s funny – how the girls eat, how the girls don’t eat. Or it isn’t,  Isak doesn’t care. He laughs because Jonas laughs. He doesn’t know why he laughs.

Later, they go to look for the oranges on the orange trees. But all the fruit they find is small, and shrivelled. It feels like a victory.

 

The lake is blue, and the mountains on the other side are blue in the blue mist. Somewhere up are other dusty roads and other gravel paths to other lake houses. In some gardens, the oranges are round and perfect; in some swimming pools, the filtration system isn’t off, and the water is cool and green. But Isak has no reason for envy: he likes where he is. They took the space under a war memorial, because it casts a shade, unfound anywhere else along the promenade. There are stairs down to the lake, and a wall – just wide enough to lie on it. Isak lies on it now, knees bent and a snapback over his head. The lake murmurs, the seagulls scream, and his friends – his friend, and his girlfriend and her friends – they are silent, too. There is no stress. His muscles slack, and he considers the house back in Oslo, and his parents in it. He sent them a text. He likes it, to be at a far distance, on a shore of an Italian lake. This is where you are to be in the summer. Somewhere cool.

 

‘Don’t you want some sunscreen?’ He open his eyes, heavy with the summer noon slumber. It is Eva, her face upside down, flushed with the heat and the freckles out. ‘Your nose, it’s like,’ she touches her own, taps it. ‘You know?’

‘Yeah,’ he yawns. ‘It’s all –‘ he forgot the word, in the sleep. ‘Fucky.’

Eva smiles. When they talked first – not long ago – she wouldn’t swear, or she wouldn’t be chill with it. It was, like. She would pause before the word, then say it quick, voice high. It made Isak laugh. He opens his eyes to see where the others are. Jonas is asleep on Ingrid’s lap and she is playing with his hair. Sara – reading a magazine. Isak isn’t sure if it’s the same fashion magazine or a new fashion magazine. A fashion magazine. She has a pen and, from time to time, draws a circle.

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Some sunscreen would be cool.’

Eva reaches for her bag and finds a box in it, and in a box, she finds a tube. She gestures for Isak to open his hand, and she leaves a small translucent droplet inside. It is cold and smooth, and Isak is almost sorry to waste it on his nose. It would be weird now not to, though. So he smacks his hand against it – it’s a show, a little, for Eva, as if he didn’t know how to use creams and shit – and forces it into his skin. Eva shakes her head.

‘Do you think the water is deep here?’ she asks.

‘It’s blue.’

‘Right,’ she smiles. She plays with a she bought from a shell-seller, next to the gate separating the lazy promenade from the traffic and the town. Isak doesn’t know how it is with the lake shells, but the sea shells, his dad said once, they have a sea voice inside, and the story was, the shells called for the sea because they missed it.

Eva swings her legs against the wall, and Isak sees a shadow swing over the shivering blue water. She doesn’t look at him, or anyone – just on the mountain on the other side. Her lipstick is almost gone. She must’ve been eating it off. It might be on her teeth now, the pink of it. Eva must be pretty. It’s cool to sit here, with a pretty girl. Isak doesn’t want to kiss her and she doesn’t want to kiss him. It’s funny.

 

When they talked first, it was just after Sara – yeah, so Sara didn’t speak to him, and Ingrid didn’t speak to him, and Jonas was always with Ingrid, and they went to party – so Isak just stuck to the porch, where third years were smoking cigarettes. He plopped down on the stairs with a paper cup full of beer. There were cracks in the pavement, and in the cracks, there was grass. Deep shit. Before he figured it out though, Eva sat next to him. She was wasted, and he asked her if she didn’t want a glass of water, or to go home – and she stared at him, eyes wide, and said: ‘Wait, aren’t you – like, a dickhead?’ And her voice broke on the word, so he laughed – and it went from there. She said she would think he was a dickhead, because he was a friend of Jonas and Jonas was a dickhead. When Isak tried to protest, she said it was cute.

It’s easy – with Eva. She doesn’t try to touch him, and when she does – like, drop her head on his shoulder, or suddenly take his hand, like at the end of the year – Isak doesn’t need to do anything. It is easy to make Eva laugh, and he likes it, it feels good to know there is someone who you can always send memes in progress to, someone who will say you are fun and cool, even when you’re not sold on it. And Eva is fun herself, alone – or here, like alone and unheard. She wouldn’t have oranges for breakfast and she never made Isak read a John Green novel. Sometimes, Isak wishes it would be Eva who – yeah – but he would have no excuse if he fucked it up with her. It’s cool how it is: on the lakefront, their legs dangling and their shadows on the shivering blue water, on the other side of the still blue mountains.

 

At the grocery store, Isak keeps to Jonas. The girls always take ages to pick the specific Greek yoghurt and the specific juice, and they read the labels and the tables, they compare the ingredients – and it tires the fuck out of Isak, who has never been a fan of the grocery stores and all the cutesy shopping shit. So, he keeps to Jonas. With Jonas, the grocery store is almost fun. Isak carries the basket and Jonas finds the products from the list Ingrid left them – she said she didn’t trust a man to shop – and it’s fun. It’s like, when you have been friends with someone for all of your life, even shopping together is cool. It’s like what they will do when they go to the university. Isak doesn’t know why but he is sure they will go to the university together and rent a flat together, and go to the grocery stores together, and they will be just so: Jonas with a list and Isak with a basket. They will use the same laundry detergent and have the same cereal for breakfast. Isak almost says it to Jonas. But he glances up and sees a gleam of a surveillance camera. He doesn’t say anything.

 

They climb the hill and the plastic bags slip in their hands, the boxes and bottles knocking against their knees. Isak and Jonas carry the drinks: the bottles of water, the cartons of juice and milk, skimmed for the girls and normal for them. They didn’t get any booze. They will look for the cellar. When they come to the house – a shape in the dark, the grass loud with the cicadas – the girls leave the groceries on the table for them to unpack, to put in the fridge and to shelve. ‘We will take a shower,’ Ingrid says with a smirk, and Isak sees Jonas’s eyes shine. The girls can do this. Isak saw girls hold hands, and kiss, and now they take a shower together.

The bathroom downstairs is not done. It’s more like a room with a shower in it, wide and undivided. There were supposed to be cubicles but there aren’t. The showerheads are in a row, not in the corners. So they will see – their – them – Isak should be turned on by it. This is why they do it. This is why they would be together – without any clothes on. Do they touch each other?

‘Do – do you know – uh – where to put the tomato sauce?’

Jonas blinks, as if pulled out of a daze.

‘Uh, wherever is fine?’

‘Yeah.’ Isak nods. ‘Cool.’

He puts the jar on the shelf. If he and Jonas – they would never look. They don’t, in the locker room. Sometimes they do, but there are rules – you don’t, just. Go for it. It would be fucking weird. There is a laughter in the bathroom, and then, a shriek. Isak should be turned on. He isn’t. It’s the heat – he’s too tired. He almost says sorry when they come into the kitchen, with hair wet and cheeks flushed, sorry for having listened, and sorry for having not cared.

 

It is Sara and Eva who find the cellar. Jonas and Ingrid go upstairs – to make out, probably – and Isak just stays in the kitchen, now empty. The heat has him. He fell asleep on the lakefront, and the blue light which had shimmered under his eyelids since the noon, now knocks against his skull in flashes. He feels sick. But, Sara and Eva find the cellar, so he pushes himself off the kitchen table, and goes into the garden, where they are, where there is a door to the cellar, a hole in the ground. When he comes, Jonas is there, squatting and working the padlock. It gives away easily – it’s off, like everything in the lake house. The door is heavy so Isak helps, and together, arm to arm, they pull it open. The inside smells of earth.

‘There’s a ladder,’ Jonas says and goes down, before anyone else has a chance to. ‘How many do you want?’ he shouts from there, far-off.

‘Two,’ Ingrid shouts back. When Jonas is back up – his head first, then the broad chest, and a hand with the first bottle, the second between his arm and his side – Isak lets a breath out and opens his fists loose. They go to the terrace, and Jonas takes his guitar from the house. They find some folded chairs – once white, then rained on – and no table, so they pass the bottles around, and when the wine is over, they leave the bottles on the tiles. Jonas doesn’t play for real – he just shows off, and laughs with Ingrid.

‘Play for me,’ she says, and he does. It’s some crap – a song Isak knows is crap and Jonas said so – but, when he sings he’s gonna marry her, marry her, marry his voice is like a sea voice. And Isak here, on a folded chair in a garden behind a lake house, after a sunset and drunk, he is like a shell.


	3. nine twelfths of a ghost

There is a movement in the air, the air and the weather, as if material objects – cones or cubes, with invisible borders – have been pushed by the wind. The heat is gone and in its absence, there is rain. A downpour, a wall of water shutting on the lake house like a jar turned upside down. So, inside they are.

 

He had a nightmare last night. There was a howl of the wind, and a push against the shutters, and the shutters’ creak. Horror movie, like. It was a nightmare, so he rose from the bed and went into the corridor. It was a nightmare, because the tiled floor wasn’t cold – and it is, it always is – it wasn’t an object: it had no physical properties, no sense of surface. It was and it wasn’t, a reflection of a floor. A single naked lightbulb buzzed above, and buzzed with the moths on the glass. He opened a door, and the pale light from the corridor forced itself into the opening and cut the bed in a half, a colourless wavelength and a sharp knife. The light crawled up to a body and cut it in a half too, as if to rip it open. The dry flake of the skin slid off and the body lied there, dead. Isak stared into the mirror above the bed and the body; he stared into the mirror and he saw the ghost in it.

Then, he heard the rain.

 

When he comes down for the breakfast – a slice of a cheesecake from the grocery store, cheese dry and the peach with the can aftertaste – he sees Ingrid in Jonas’s tee. Down on the sofa, with her laptop balanced between her belly and her hips, mouth in a pout.

‘Wanna watch a movie, Isak?’ she asks, the light of the screen white on her face. ‘I said we should watch the new Woody Allen, it’s cool and the humour is like, intelligent, you know? But, like, Jonas –’ she drawls and taps more violently. ‘He says he doesn’t feel like it, so.’

‘Uh.’ Isak pushes the fork into the peach, to halve it. ‘And Eva and Sara?’

‘I just don’t understand, like, why does he have an opinion on Woody Allen if he hasn’t seen any of his movies? It’s just, like – totally presumptuous?’ Ingrid blows hair out of her face. ‘So, cool, if he feels like, yeah, lying in bed whole day, sure, but, it’s just funny how I had to watch all parts of _Transformers_ and hear how fucking hot Megan Fox is but he, like – says he doesn’t feel like Woody Allen?’

‘Uh-huh,’ Isak chews the peach. ‘She’s not that hot, though.’ Ingrid turns to look at him. ‘I mean, Megan Fox. I never knew what was the deal with her.’

‘Right?’ Ingrid smiles and Isak tries to smile back. But, the peach is stuck in his throat and he has said it, and Ingrid will say it to Jonas, and when Jonas asked, Isak agreed, said Megan Fox was hot. He doesn’t get it. He never gets it, like, in the locker room. They always vote, who has the best boobs, who has the best ass, and sure, he knows the answers, but he never cares. ‘Isak?’ It’s Ingrid, and Isak realizes he froze with a piece of cheesecake on the fork.

‘Yeah, I was just –‘ he swallows the peach. ‘Yeah. Eva and Sara, where are they?’

‘Oh, they’re like,’ Ingrid waves her hand. ‘They figured out the TV in their room and now there’s like, _Lion King_ with Italian dubbing, they’re watching that. They say it’s fun.’

He puts the fork down and tries it out, Ingrid could you not tell Jonas I said Megan Fox wasn’t hot. But then, she would ask why. He doesn’t know why. He goes to the kitchen and puts the plate in the sink, because the dish washer is full, and he watches the rusty water take the crumbs of cheese and the peach juice, he watches how it floats on the stream, how it sinks into the outlet. The lake house is far from the town, so it must have its own sanitation system, or whatever. Now, Isak doesn’t know shit, so. He watches the sink, and he thinks, if it isn’t what fucks the orange trees up. The waste the water pushed into the ground. If it isn’t toxic, some. Toxic enough.

 

So he stands in the corridor and considers the doors, the door-handles, the rooms behind. There is a room where there are Sara and Eva – he hears their voices, and they must be talking over the movie. Or they don’t watch it, they made a pause or put it on the mute, and it’s just a cover-up to talk shit. Out of the moon. Like, periods and horoscopes.

Then, there is a room where there is Jonas. Didn’t get up, Ingrid said. Probably on his phone, with a game. Like, _Boardtastic Skateboarding 2_. Isak beat his record recently and Jonas did not get over it, he doesn’t like to lose. Not that Isak likes, but he isn’t so sore. He just likes to win against Jonas. Phone games, races, maths tests. He’s never had a guitar and he can’t move on the board like Jonas does, but he comes up with the sickest beats and is a the best at phone games. Like _Boardtastic Skateboarding 2_. So, if he opens the door, and comes in – and the room will be full of light now, Ingrid has opened the shutters, has opened the window and let the air and light in – so, he will come in and Jonas won’t stop the game, but when he will finish it, he will put the phone away and – Isak blinks. It’s been some time since he saw Jonas in the pjs. You don’t do sleepovers when you’re fourteen. Even a year ago, they would meet, drink coke and eat nachos Jonas’ss mama made, and play _Call of Duty_ – but then, Ingrid. So they don’t, anymore. Jonas will put the phone away and – he has grown, a little, like he does every now and then, surprise Isak with a centimetre of height, a new tee, the old too tight – and he is in his pjs – some new ones, and – Isak glances above.

There is a lightbulb. You can’t stare into the lightbulb. It will fuck your eyes up. Like, you want to, but it hurts. When you take your eyes off, then the afterimage will follow, blue shivery shape under your eyelids, like a memory of the sunlight on the lakefront. And you will want to stare into the lightbulb, the real light, but you can’t bear to, for a little while now.

Then, there is the last room, the room where there isn’t anyone and anything – just the mirror on the wall. The door locked, Isak turns to the reflection. He grows, too. But he grows weird. The shapes are all odd, as if someone put a person together, then dropped it on the tiles and tried to put it back together, but didn’t remember how. You grow up. You don’t know how to move your body and then your body moves alone, and goes all fucked up. Like, even his nose. It flakes. He catches a flake with his fingernails and tears it off, and then it is in his open hand, a piece of dead skin.

 

‘Hi.’

It’s Sara.

‘Uh,’ he runs hand through his hair. Sleep never looks good on him, and _South Park_ marathons don’t look good on anyone. ‘Hi?’

‘Yeah, so, we’re ordering pizza, and are you okay with the Hawaiian?’

‘Yeah, cool. I’m cool,’ he bites his lip before he says anything else, because fuck, if this isn’t awkward. He glances at Sara. Sara smiles. It’s always as if she were sorry she dumped him – not because she would like to, like, have not to, but because she knows she was the best Isak could hope for. Her eyes are somewhere on his elbow. But there’s nothing wrong with it – no pimples, no flakes, no scars. Just a fucking elbow. ‘Uh, so –‘

‘Yeah!’ Sara looks up. ‘Yeah, the pizza will be in like, an – an hour? Everything here takes so fucking long,’ she laughs.

‘Uh,’ he doesn’t know what to say. Please, don’t talk to me ever. ‘Yeah, you know what, I – need to, go, I need to go to the bathroom right now.’ Fuck.

‘Yeah’ Sara steps back. ‘Cool, I’ll just – go and order the pizzas.’

‘Good luck,’ he shouts and, when Sara is down the stairs, he shuts the door and hits his head against it. And again. He hopes he can wire it into his brain, into his stupid body. A shock after every wrong fucking move.

 

Like, he used to kiss her. Any time he did, it was the worst minute of his life. It was just so fucking boring – he couldn’t do it right. So, it worked like this: Jonas went to the skate park. Ingrid went with Jonas, and Sara went with Ingrid. When Jonas was on the board, Ingrid had Sara on the bench next to her, so they could talk shit and how cool Jonas was. And when Jonas was up, Ingrid would come to him, and they would be gross together. So, there was an empty place on the bench. And Isak didn’t think when he took it. And then he did think, a little. There were Jonas and Ingrid, and Isak and Sara. It couldn’t be so bad, if Jonas liked it so fucking much. It was what you did.  So Isak sat next to Sara on the bench in the skate park, and in the cinema when they all went out, and when it was just the two of them, and a horror movie. Jonas said horror movies are the shit, where the girls are concerned. Sara held on to his arm, and then didn’t let go, and she held his hand when they were coming back. He took the tram with her, and walked her home, and didn’t mind when she kissed him on the cheek. It left a mark, sticky and pink, and it felt good, to own the street, the neon-bright night, like. Here, everybody. There’s a girl who kisses me.

At the school, he picked up the rules – he carried Sara’s bag, he bought her milkshakes in the cafeteria, he ripped on her, but not too much, and he shoved Jonas – just a joke – when Jonas said Sara wasn’t the hottest girl in their class. Like, Isak didn’t care. It was what you did. Once they were into their second week, Isak kissed her on the mouth. Boring. Then they kissed again, and again, and it still sucked, and Isak hated it, because – Jonas was good at it. People were good at it. People kissed, and liked kissing, and  wrote songs about kissing, and when Isak heard one play at a party, he crushed his paper cup and the beer spilled on his hands. He kissed Sara at school, he kissed Sara in her house, he kissed her in a park and behind a garbage dump, sober and drunk, and it always sucked. So, he would go to a kebab. Or he would get an onion roll at the cafeteria. Ingrid would be pissed. But Sara just sighed and offered him chewing gum. He’s still sick of the taste. Mint. He was sick at the smell of it. So, he would bail. Stay and watch footie matches at the pitch. Forget and just hop on the tram, ride anywhere.

It wasn’t a month when she broke up with him. She said he didn’t care, and he said he was sorry – and she cried, and he – pat her on the back, so fucking awkward – and then it was over. When Jonas came over, with a bottle of whisky he stole from his dad, and said, consolation percents – Isak almost laughed right there and then, because fuck, this was the best day of his life.

 

 

The tiny shadows of the rain swim on the floor, darker and darker. Isak watches _South Park_ , then sleeps.

 

They call a ghost.

It isn’t nine, or it isn’t long past nine, and they have been drinking wine. The fancy glasses, coloured like, stand between the opened pizza boxes, the oil-stained napkins, and the small plastic containers, some with the tomato sauce, some with the garlic sauce.

They had wine. It was Jonas who went for it, into the rain, and Ingrid kissed him when he came back; he had the garlic sauce, but the rain must have washed the taste off, for which Isak was sorry – he liked garlic – and Ingrid kissed him.

Then, they had wine.

Then, somebody said: let’s call the ghost, a ghost, any ghost, the ghost of the lake house, but no, it is only how to call the bloody Mary in google – so they are in the upstairs bathroom, no mirrors downstairs, in a circle and Isak is in the centre of it, heavy and he doesn’t know why – there are blue flashes under his eyelids and there are blue flashes knocking against his skull, and if he were a tiny lizard, his skull would crush long time ago, but he’s not, so his skin flakes only on the top of his nose. And if he were a shell, he would have no skull, unless shells are – remnants of the – of the – he should know this. He should know this. This is when you know new things: when you grow and your body changes. You find new secrets in it, the heat in the pit of your stomach, and the bruises like afterimages of the movements you didn’t see made, the movements your body made alone, a stranger. Blue, like the flashes under his eyelids.

It isn’t midnight, but they are in a circle and Isak is in the centre of it, and they google how to call the bloody Mary. Just call her, hail Mary, hail Satan. Mary, Mary. Mary marry you. There’s a flash of a phone. There’s a glass in his hand, and there’s glass on the wall. A glass in his hand and a glass in a glass. This is three glasses, which is six reflections, but there are two Isaks, which times six is twelve. It isn’t twelve yet but nine, so there’re nine. Nine Isaks and nine twelfths of a ghost, called. He puts the glass to his eye. There is a verse his mum repeats, over and over: _for now we see through a glass – darkly_ – _but then_ , but then the blues and other secrets will come to light – but then the glass shatters on the tiles, and Isak smiles. Yes, he dropped it. He knew he would.

There is no reflection, if there is no glass. There is no image. The light stops at the wall, doesn’t cut into you. Doesn’t rip you open. They had wine. Somebody said: let’s call the ghost. The ghost has always been here.

 

_  
_


	4. sugar rush

After the rain, the colours are bright and biting. Or it’s just the hangover. The water shines like a fever dream, so Isak turns to the mountains, but they shiver, too. He pushes the snapback on his eyes, and lowers the volume in his headphones. It’s Passenger, the _let her go_ shit from the radio. Sappy as fuck, but Isak likes it, it’s easy on his headache and when he listens to it, he doesn’t hear whoever sings it, anyway – he hears Jonas who plays it for Ingrid. For all shit Jonas gives to them, he doesn’t sing anything as well as these crappy love songs. His voice gets soft, like, and the songs are slower, so he doesn’t stumble on the lyrics, and when he does, the girls say it’s cute, because isn’t it what a crush is, when you fuck up because you don’t want to fuck up so bad. Not that Isak would know. He glances from under the snapback, glances to where Ingrid and Jonas are. She sits on the wall, behind the shadow’s edge, with a reflection of the sun on her shades and a reflection of the sunlit lake on her shins, hands behind hips. Jonas is standing next to her, with a tube of sunscreen. He’s applying it to Ingrid’s neck now, and he puts some on her hair but she doesn’t see, or doesn’t care. A crush. It is like a contest, sometimes – or it feels like one, when Isak is watching. Like, who cares less. Jonas will rip on Ingrid and Ingrid will get pissed at Jonas, and Jonas will bail on her to go for a kebab with the guys, and Ingrid won’t text him for days, but they smile into the kisses, and now Jonas is drawing the smallest circles with his pinkie, so there’s no traces of white left. It’s the worst part, the part Isak never figured out. How much do you care for the girl? He didn’t. Jonas does. Jonas cares for Ingrid, and because he cares, he is kissing her softly on the neck gross with sunscreen, and the next blink, he is pushing her into the lake.

Isak laughs, because Jonas laughs. Isak laughs, because Eva and Sara’s faces are to laugh at. He looks over, into the water, and there is Ingrid, red in the face and flapping her arms. It’s the best shit Isak has ever seen. He doesn’t pull his headphones out though, because he doesn’t like girls’ screams. Or anybody’s. So he is looking over at Ingrid, with the Passenger in the background, and the song goes into the chorus as Ingrid gives up on the screaming and tries to make it to the stairs, or at least to a shallow part, where she will reach the ground. The lake is deep, thank fuck. Thank fuck, but there is a voice inside, probably the hangover, probably the heat: wouldn’t it be cool, wouldn’t it be fun. To see someone shatter – to shatter totally. They would have to go on a run to hide from the police, they would live on dead oranges, and it would be like in a movie, and the best part, the best part is, it would be just the two of them alone, forever.

 

When the girls go – they all go, Ingrid leaning between Eva and Sara, soaking mad – and Eva glanced back, and smiled at Isak, like, what a mess – and Jonas asked if Ingrid couldn’t take a joke and Ingrid said nothing, and there was still a trace of white just below the line of her hair – so, when the girls go, he and Jonas stay on the lakefront. His tee off, Jonas is lying down on the steps, head thrown back and his stupid John Lennon shades on. It would look like posing if Jonas ever did pose – but he doesn’t, he never does anything he doesn’t feel like. He sincerely and carelessly doesn’t give a fuck what the others think, and he never has. Not even when he was a funny kid with a belly and braces, with a hair that a comb would get lost in, with no friends but Isak. When their year got lice, and Isak cried anytime the nurse said he needed to wash his hair with the special shampoo again, Jonas shamelessly boasted how many his mama found last time she checked. He has grown, and he has mellowed, but he doesn’t ever, but ever, give a fuck. Like, right now. He cares for Ingrid and he doesn’t care what she thinks.

They lie on the stairs, and when it becomes boring – Jonas says so, for all Isak cares, they could lie here forever – they stroll down the promenade and they see the workers set up a fun fair, and a small stage for a must-be local band, they check out the vans with street food and buy hot dogs, and when they’re done with hot dogs, they get candy floss and swap halfway through so they can get two flavours each. Ingrid would say it’s gross – unhygienic – which, fucking ridiculous, it’s not like she doesn’t swap spit with Jonas on the daily. Fuck Ingrid, basically.

Isak says so: ‘Fuck her,’ and he takes a bite of Jonas’s caramel candy floss, which is sort of disgusting and sort of the best food Isak ever had.

‘Mm,’ Jonas licks a string of sugar off his mouth. ‘I’m trying.’

Isak doesn’t choke on the candyfloss, but it’s a close one.

‘You, uh –‘

‘Nah,’ Jonas shrugs. ‘Not really.’

Isak sucks on the stick, coated in hard sugar.

‘You’ve never been,’ Jonas speaks up after a while. ‘To Milan, right?’

‘Nope. I don’t do, all this. Holiday shit. You know.’

‘Yeah,’ Jonas pauses and for a moment, Isak is afraid he will say sorry. But Jonas knows him, so he doesn’t. This is why they are best friends, because they know how not to say things. ‘Yeah. Do you wanna go? I could give you a tour, like, I have this shit down,’ he grins at Isak and Isak grins back.

‘Sure, why not.’

Jonas shoves him, and Isak bites on the stick. He doesn’t mind the taste, the wood through run with sugar, and he doesn’t mind the weight of Jonas’s arm on his.

 

Before they make it to the train station, before they figure out the tickets and the schedules, they stop at a coffee shop. For hot chocolate with gelato. Isak would go for a beer – this is what you do – but Jonas is like a child, sometimes, like, he wants chocolate. He doesn’t drink much. He has shared secret bottles with Isak, and he drinks a cup of beer when they go to a party sometimes, but he says he doesn’t drink, and he doesn’t, not as much, and never the wine with girls. Anybody else would give in, but Jonas is cool with it, like he doesn’t need it, he couldn’t care less. Eva said, he would be less of a dick if he dropped the act, but Isak likes it. It’s funny. It’s weird. It’s how Jonas has always been. So, hot chocolate with gelato.

The chocolate is dense in their mouths and heavy in their stomachs. It is slow on the smooth inside of the cup: you need to wait for the last drops to slide down, too sweet. Their eyes fall shut and they sink in the seats. Behind the coffee shop’s windows, the world turn gold: it’s an evening.

They don’t make it to the station. They don’t go to Milan. They pay and leave, Jonas checks his phone, as if Ingrid would ever text him before receiving a formal apology. They pass the street they would take if they went to the train station. They pass the vendors and the shell-sellers, past the shops and the bakeries, and the restaurants and the pizzerias, and they come in between silent villas, where there is the road that goes uphill, the road to the lake house.

Isak doesn’t look back, to see the town, to see the lake, but halfway up, he considers Milan. A tour, with Jonas as a guide. They would go to the roof of the cathedral, the one where all the photos are from. They wouldn’t take any. There would be marble, and pigeons, and a sunset. They wouldn’t say anything.

 

A coffee shop was where Ingrid and Jonas had their first date. Or it wasn’t a date, yet. The second year of the middle school, Jonas grew tall, and broad, and less intense. It has been happening all this while, ever since the late primary – he went out to skate and slowly lost the rest of the baby fat, suddenly turned lean. He didn’t squeak anymore – just spoke in a low voice Isak had to fake, and he talked less, like he realized it wasn’t worth it. The music he listened to, older – like, blues and reggae, and some hip hop – just weird in the primary, was cool in the middle school. Isak didn’t see a difference: he was best friends with the squeaky weirdo kid, he was best friends with the coolest guy in their year, whatever. It was the people, how they held themselves with Jonas, that made him realize. Like, they would stand straight, and they would ask his opinion, and they would listen to him. Isak always had, but whatever. And then, the girls. The girls would flick their hair, and bat their eyelashes, and ask him to play the guitar he sometimes brought to school, and they would always laugh at his jokes. Louder than Isak. He didn’t have a problem with it: he had his own brand, and a better taste in memes, football teams and jackets. But it didn’t surprise him, when in the winter of their second year, just before the break, Ingrid came to where they sat – Jonas, Isak, and some other guys – and she said, would Jonas like to go for a coffee with her, sometime. Jonas just shrugged, checked his phone, and said he was free on Thursday, like it was no big deal. They went for a coffee, and then they went for another coffee, and then they went to the aquarium in Drøbak the last day of the winter break. Right next to the basin with the sea crabs, Jonas kissed Ingrid and she kissed him back. And then, as it goes: the carrying of the bag, the buying of the milkshakes. Isak heard the girls say they are the cutest couple at the school.

 

The lake house is dark when they come to it, the window shutters closed. It’s not like any rule was broken, or like there is a curfew, but their return is a secret one, steps careful and voices suddenly lowered to a whisper. They push the door open and go into the corridor, from the corridor to the kitchen. Their warm soles clap against the tiles on the floor and then they don’t, when they pause, the light in the kitchen on and buzzing. They need a plan, a strategy, a plot – but then, Eva stands in the frame, her face invisible, a halo on her hair.

‘Good evening,’ Jonas says. He knows Eva doesn’t like him, not as much as Sara does, not as much as Ingrid would like her to.

Eva nods but doesn’t say anything as Jonas passes her, whistling a tune. It’s the anthem, and Isak smiles. ‘Isak,’ she starts and glances at Jonas, who raises his eyebrows.

‘This is Isak,’ he says and points.

‘Ha, ha. Some privacy?’

Jonas makes a face and leaves, and Isak hates Eva for a moment, because he had a good afternoon, and now it’s over, now Jonas will go to Ingrid’s room and he will apologize, and she won’t be pissed, and they will be gross tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow. So, Isak doesn’t ask. He stays in the corridor, in the shadows, and waits.

‘So,’ she leans on the frame. ‘Remember – the guy Sara mentioned? The one who, um, asked Ingrid out?’

Isak shrugs.

‘Yeah, so, he was, like. Older.’ She is now playing with the hem of her skirt. ‘Not like, in his twenties. More, um. Forties?’

‘Yikes.’

‘Yeah,’ Eva ducks her head. ‘So, like. It’s – really lame for you guys to leave us alone? Like, from the lake to here, it’s not so short. And things happen, you know?’

Isak didn’t. He isn’t happy he does. He doesn’t care. ‘Why won’t Ingrid tell, like –‘ He breaks off, and looks at Eva. She looks at him. Like, well, duh. She won’t, not ever. This is what crush is. A contest, who cares less, who needs less. It’s funny, a crush. It’s like – the caramel candy floss. You could puke, it’s so awful. But you will lick the stick clean, because every sugary crystal is more precious than anything.


	5. kiddie shallow

‘So, she doesn’t feel great,’ Eva says.

Ingrid hasn’t left the bedroom since yesterday afternoon. The door was shut, and – Jonas told him, last night – locked. Jonas had to get musty blankets from the closet under the stairs, and set up a make-do bed on a wicker bench, the single piece of the furniture outside of the kitchen. Isak wanted to say, the bed in his small room was wide enough, and if they lied upside down, feet to head, it wouldn’t be – weird, or.

But he didn’t say anything.

‘What do we do?’ Eva asks and looks at Sara, and doesn’t look at Jonas. Sara glances up from her phone and shrugs. She’s probably mad it wasn’t her who Ingrid let in, it isn’t her who is in charge of the news. Girls. ‘Should we go to the lakefront, or?’

‘I’m sick of the lake,’ Sara says. Jonas, who’s tuning his guitar and not looking at Eva, hides his snicker, but only just.

They could go to Milan. But Isak doesn’t want Sara – or Eva – there, so he doesn’t say anything. With the girls, they would have to window-shop, and take photos, and stop at every bathroom so the girls can go and do whatever they do. Make-up and shit.

Jonas is fucking around with the guitar, but it’s not tuning anymore – he’s done that, now it’s just not to take part in the argument. Isak doesn’t have a guitar, so he takes out the phone, opens _Boardtastic Skateboarding 2_. He’s gonna beat his record. He wonders if he could pull his headphones in, or if it wouldn’t be worth the shit from Sara and Eva. He tries to focus on the game. The guy, a bunch of pixels and algorithms, he looks cool. He’s alone in a skate park Isak unlocked just two weeks ago, a skate park in Sydney. Isak swipes on the screen and the guy rotates on the jump. Isak would probably end splashed on the concrete belly of their local park, teeth out. You grow and your body changes. You are all over the place. Fucking puberty. The guy in the game is grown up, smooth-faced and smooth-moved. He flips, ollies and lands.

‘Isak?’ It’s Eva. Isak looks up – Sara and Jonas are gone, and Eva has shades on,  the beach bag  is swinging on her arm. ‘Good to go?’ She smiles and Isak slowly smiles back. He is sorry he was mad at her the other night – and not only then. He hates her sometimes, as he does hate everyone, sometimes, and she doesn’t have a clue. It’s sad. But not sad enough to say anything.

‘Yeah, I’m good,’ he says and slips the phone into his pocket. ‘Do you have any sunscreen?’ He asks, like it’s a joke, and it is, and they laugh as they leave the house and go through gravel to where Jonas and Sara are, Sara with her face spitefully blank, Jonas rocking on his heels and grinning. They go downhill, and Isak doesn’t look back, on the empty lake house, and on the window of the room where Ingrid is.

 

The sky is the same painful blue. There is no chance of storm, not again, but Isak’s skin prickles with tension still heavy in the air. He glances to the stairs, to the war memorial. Sara is there alone, with the fashion magazine, the marker, the marked circles. She doesn’t take the shades off and she reapplies the sunscreen every twenty minutes. She has set the alarm on the phone, so it chirps every twenty minutes and reminds them all, she is here, with the sunscreen. Eva is on the wall – she is where Ingrid was, hands and head poised the same. Only Jonas doesn’t stand as close, and he doesn’t touch her neck. Jonas is speaking to her but Isak doesn’t hear her reply, Kindred Fever blasting into his ears. Jonas is speaking, with daring smiles, like, what – maybe he is wrong? – but Isak can see, it’s just a joke – Jonas knows he’s right, he always is. Eva shakes her head, but she smiles too and shrugs. She doesn’t care if Jonas is wrong. It’s the first time Isak has seen them, together and not pissed, and he wonders, if this is where they hit it off. On the lakefront, under a postcard sun. Weird, Isak thinks, and then he doesn’t, because Jonas pushes Eva off the wall. And Eva, when Isak looks over, Eva laughs. She cannot stop, it’s like she will choke on the lake water. This cannot taste good, it’s full of shit. Sara doesn’t pretend anymore she doesn’t care what they do – she glares at Jonas, and Isak realizes – so this is what it is. Jonas pushed Ingrid off, and Ingrid freaked. Jonas pushed Eva off, and Eva laughed. A crush is a contest. There’s a tap on his neck, and when Isak turns back, Jonas – still grinning, eyes bright green – tears the headphones off Isak’s ears and then –

 

  * and then: Jonas’s fingers splayed on his shoulder blades, for a second – the surface of the lake shattered – the dirty water and the taste of rust in his throat –



 

 

  * and, he doesn’t know how to swim –



 

 

  * and then: his collar pulled up, tight on his neck, up and up.



 

They lie like jellyfishes thrown by a wave, full of ache and laughter, and they can’t stop – it’s a shock reaction, it’s funny like – you realized you were drowning funny. You saw it all: body in the sand, little fish nibbling at your bones, ten thousand years later, your skeleton a remnant of the summer, your skull a shell of a soft crab. But then you didn’t die. You didn’t die, and it was worse, to be pulled up – the sun against your eyelids – the ground again under your feet, under your back, and rather than die, you must live with it. So Isak opens his eyes and sees the sky, still blue. He’s laughing – his body is moving – and he thinks, he wishes he died.

 

They find a market, a row of stalls with heaps of clothes – buy cheap – and they stop there, all soaked, Sara mad behind. Just as they calmed down, she just said, real mature, all of you – and this sent them into another fit of giggles, so she hasn’t said anything more. She makes sure to be a few paces behind them, arms crossed on her chest, mouth pursed. They don’t care. They move around the stalls and a deal is made: Isak will buy a tee for Jonas, Jonas for Eva, and Eva for Isak. They all need dry downs, too, but it’s more fun to look for the ugliest tees, than for shorts. Isak would like it to be romantic, on the cheesy side, like, a dish at Jonas for having a girlfriend. He picks up one with a naked girl print. Well, not exactly romantic. But still a dish. Probably will see more of her than of Ingrid, at this rate.

‘So funny?’ Eva asks, measures him, his smile and the tee. He just nods. Girls. They don’t get everything. ‘I’m thinking this one for you,’ she unfolds it, white with a lime triangle. ‘How do you like it?’ He doesn’t get it. ‘Like, a triangle. It’s like Illuminati? Cause you’re so obsessed with it,’ she ends and beams at him. Isak scratches his neck.

‘Obsessed,’ he repeats. ‘No, it’s not, like, I’m obsessed with it, it’s ironic, so – like, I don’t believe it is for real.’

‘Isak, I follow you on insta.’

He sighs.

‘Exactly? Like, it’s so – over the top, fuck – because – because it is ironic? The more I post it on my insta or whatever, the more ironic it is, like, I’m not – I’m not obsessed with Illuminati, okay? And like, the more ironic it is – the more ironic it is? You know.’

Eva is just blinking at him. It does make sense, like. It’s brilliant.

‘Wow,’ she smiles, but less. ‘Hard. But –‘ she looks down. ‘Do you like the t-shirt?’

‘Yeah. It’s awesome.’

‘I know, right,’ she says and her accent is funny – Bergen English, Isak laughs, and she looks at him, strangely serious. ‘But, like – if everything is so ironic, and like –‘ she pauses. ‘I mean, what do you like for real, like, really for real?’

Isak thinks, Jonas. Then he thinks, what the fuck, you can’t just say – Jonas. Jonas, he thinks and looks for him, on the other side of the stall, where the women’s clothing is. The seller is flirting with him, and he doesn’t mind, he grins, he shines in the sun. A postcard sun. A postcard boy. What does he really like?

‘Good music,’ he says. Eva nods and doesn’t ask more questions, but Isak thinks, of the Passenger songs and all pop crap – of the fucking _Rude_ , with the marry you, marry you, marry you. He likes them, and not ironically – but in secret. It’s not funny like Illuminati, it’s not funny at all – or it is, but then it is funny like drowning.

 

The windows are open, shutters wide and the curtains blown with the wind. The bedroom window, the corridor window, and the two windows in the kitchen, behind which they see Ingrid move. She is cooking, they can tell. When they come into the lake house, she calls,

‘I’m in the kitchen!’ and when Jonas comes there first, shoes not off, Isak hears Ingrid laugh and then he hears her fall silent, kissed. Sara and Eva glance to each other, and Eva smiles. But when they sit together at the table, it’s tense as fuck. It feels like home this way. Ingrid is a little off and Jonas laughs too much. Eva says,

‘It’s good,’ and rolls the spaghetti on her fork, sucks the last thread in, like Isak used to before his dad told him not to, told him he would get sauce on the shirt, and wouldn’t this be a bother for mummy.

‘No, it’s so not?’ Jonas laughs. Isak stares into his plate. ‘This is – the pasta is hard and the sauce is just- ’

‘You don’t have to eat it,’ Ingrid doesn’t smile.

She put her fork down, and it is lying in her fist, clenched white.

‘Hey,’ Jonas takes her hand, draws a circle with his thumb. Isak is glad Jonas did, but he wishes Jonas didn’t. ‘I don’t mind. It’s fun to eat bad pasta, it’s an experience.’ A giggle bubbles out of Isak, and Ingrid snatches her hand out of Jonas’ss hold. ‘Jesus, I’m just joking. It’s not a big deal, it’s just a pasta,’ he stops and looks at Ingrid. She turns her face from him, holds herself tight. ‘Thank you, alright? Thank you for this meal of,’ his voice cracks, and he laughs again. ‘Fuck, I can’t –‘

Ingrid gets up and pushes her chair off, loud.

She stares at him, and  –

‘Grow up, Jonas.’

Then she leaves, Sara behind her. Isak lets his breath out. This is it. Done. The knot in his stomach eases. There is always a satisfaction in this, like – you knew it would explode and it did. But because it wasn’t you who blew it up, it’s more terrifying. It happened to you, that’s all.

Eva collects the plates, the cutlery. Isak gives her his. Jonas doesn’t, so she has to reach out over the table. When she already is reaching, he pushes it towards the centre, and it’s too close now. She looks funny: still in the air.

‘Why are you –‘ she breaks off. She takes the plate.

‘Why am I what?’ Jonas laughs after her. ‘Why am I what?’

‘Bro –‘

Isak doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know how to say it. So he doesn’t say anything.

 

They leave the lake house and go into the garden, dark and full of cicadas. It’s a relief, after the inevitability of the dinner, all of them sick pale in the lightbulb light. Now it’s soft shadows and slouched shapes, and Isak can’t see the leaves or the twigs, can’t see anything. It’s a relief. The dry grass tickles his ankles. He follows Jonas, who stubbornly bounces on, not looking back, and he follows Jonas when they come to the empty swimming pool and climb down the rusted ladder as long as it goes. , the pigeon shit, the drowsy cicadas.

The cans of beer they took from the fridge once Eva was gone from the kitchen are cold in their hands. They hiss and the beer spills, a little, but it’s okay. Isak is happy, and he is happy because he knows he shouldn’t be happy, he’s happy out of spite. So they are assholes. Whatever. It’s fucking fun.

‘Girls,’ he says and takes a sip of the beer.

‘Girls,’ Jonas repeats, as if it was a toast. Isak didn’t want it to be one. He wanted it to be a border. But he replies,

‘Yep.’

‘Like, Sara won’t look at you now, will she.’ And Isak didn’t want to hear of Sara, or of any girl, not now. He glances at Jonas to see the smile, the laughter which exploded in the kitchen.

‘Uh.’

‘And it’s her fault you broke up, right?’

Jonas is staring at the can in his hand, reading the name in the dark. Some light beer, a fancy brand.

‘Yeah.’

They are alone on the bottom of the empty swimming pool. There is no one. No one to hear, no one to say: what the fuck, it was your fault, you fucking failure of a kisser, of a boyfriend, of a –

Jonas sighs. ‘Sometimes it is like, what the fuck can you do? Just, take it in the stride and go along, cause it’s not,’ he drinks, dries his mouth with a hand, and Isak stares, at the droplets on his finger, at the droplets he missed. ‘It’s not right, to just –‘

‘Why isn’t it right.’

Jonas turns to him. Isak doesn’t know what he just said.

‘What?’

‘Like,’ Isak doesn’t know what he is saying. ‘Why isn’t it right, to do this.’

‘Do what?’

‘What?’

They laugh and the beer spills again, on their shorts, on their knees.

‘Yeah,’ Isak is quick. ‘Hey – remember how, how I like – my uncle got me a bottle of beer for the end of the primary, and I was – so fucking terrified, cause what if – anybody sees it, right – so I called you like, Jonas, what the fuck do I do with this bottle of beer?’

He remembers: how they sat on the stairs, the slip of the grass before them, and the fence too close, glancing over their arms to the screen doors, and swallowing the beer too fast, and giggling all the way through.

‘Yeah,’ Jonas says with a smile and a small furrow. ‘And I came, and we had it together. Why?’

‘Dunno, I just –‘ Isak doesn’t know what he is saying. He thinks, it was the best day of my life. ‘I was just thinking of it, cause it’s like, here. A backyard, here – and beer.’

‘Some backyard it is though,’ Jonas shakes his head. ‘Fucking Italy, man. Like, no offense to yours, but –‘

‘Yeah, yeah. Fuck that backyard.’

‘Yeah, fuck. Like –‘ and Jonas isn’t looking at him or at anything – it’s a look he gets, when he looks inside of himself, when he gets dreamy – the lameness of it, the lack of cool, the tipsy slur of Jonas’s voice, Isak hopes to know it forever. ‘Like, look at all this. The stars – and the green here, it’s greener? You feel? Everything here is alive. I just – see, there are goose bumps all over my skin.’ He stretches his arm, nods at Isak, and Isak looks, Isak measures Jonas’s skin, moonlight blue. ‘I could – we’re almost fifteen,’ Jonas says. ‘We’re gonna be out of the fucking middle school in a year – the world is ours,’ he smiles, and yells. ‘The world is ours!’ It echoes in the empty swimming pool. ‘And back then,’ he looks at Isak now, shrugs. ‘It was, you know. A backyard and a couple of losers with a beer.’

‘Losers.’

‘You know,’ Jonas knocks an elbow against his.

‘Yeah – but –‘

It was the best day of his life.


	6. afloat

The lake house is silent when Isak wakes up. He is always the last one to come down, so he is used to it now, to Jonas’s voice carrying through, to the rusty water pouring down, to the shitty music playing from Sara or Ingrid’s phone. Sometimes they’ll sing. They don’t, now. He leaves the room and stands in the corridor, considers the doors. Silence. He goes down the stairs and stops by the kitchen. Silence. He comes in, checks the hour on the microwave. It’s past twelve. He wonders if they left. Sara’s uncle is supposed to come tomorrow, but he might have come today. They packed their suitcases, cleaned the house, closed the cellar and left. But no – there is a sound from the garden, like a shower. Comes from the open window. Isak takes a pack of shrimp-flavoured crisps from the cabinet and goes out. Between the folded chairs Eva is crouching with a garden hose and a pot, a tattered sponge on the ground. Isak watches her for a while, eats the crisps. Her hair is up in a bun and she wears no make-up, no shades. Her face is flushed with effort, and she swears under her breath when she takes the sponge and scrubs the bottom of the pot. It’s sad. Isak crouches next to her.

‘Crisps?’

Eva looks at him and turns back to the pot, jaw hard. Set on ignoring him.

‘I’m sorry, for – yeah.’

‘I just don’t get it,’ Eva puts the sponge back, takes the hose. Isak looks over her arm. There are burnt bits of pasta stuck. ‘I don’t,’ she looks at him again, but now she’s softer. She doesn’t like arguing with people, Eva. Must work fine for her and Ingrid, because Ingrid doesn’t like to be argued with. Works fine now.

‘It’s hard to explain.’ He offers her crisps again, and she takes one, and grimaces at the taste. He smiles, and she smiles back. ‘You know how Jonas gets sometimes.’

‘Yeah,’ she says, and looks up to the lake house, to the closed room where Ingrid and Jonas are. The water from the hose is spilling over her jean shorts. ‘I almost –‘ she breaks off and shakes her head. ‘Dickhead.’

‘He’s not,’ Isak replies, easy – and it is a joke by now, too. Eva says, dickhead, and Isak says, no. And when Eva asks if Isak has any albums from the primary, he shows her the photos, says, this is Jonas, and Eva says, what a brat, and Isak just grins. ‘What’s the deal with,’ he gestures at the hose and Eva laughs.

‘Oh, that. The dish washer refused to cooperate.’

Isak wonders if it isn’t Ingrid who should wash this, who should tear off the burnt pasta with her fingers, ruin her nail job. But it is Eva who does it. Isak wonders if he could say – you know, it was as if everyone left.

Eva stills next to him and Isak looks up. It’s Ingrid, on the step of the screen door. She’s wearing Jonas’s tee.

‘Hello,’ she says.

‘Hi,’ Eva says back. Isak just shrugs.

‘Why don’t you use the dish-washer?’

‘It’s, um, it’s out of work.’

‘Oh, bad luck,’ Ingrid smiles, comes to them, but doesn’t sit, doesn’t crouch, just stands, hands easy on her hips. ‘It’s so nice of you to wash it all by yourself.’

‘It’s nothing.’

Then, from the kitchen they hear Jonas ask with a yawn,

‘Babe?’

So Ingrid smiles wider and leaves. Eva lets a shaky breath out and scrubs. Fuck, her lips move, but there is no sound, fuck, fuck, fuck. Isak wonders what she will do with the tee Jonas bought her at the market, a day and ten thousand years ago.

 

Noon, Jonas goes to the town downhill, on a bike he found in a tool shed deep in the garden, and comes back with nachos and ingredients for tomato salsa. Isak never liked salsa, but Ingrid loves it. She is sitting on the counter top, swinging her legs – a bracelet almost falls from her ankle and Jonas undoes it, his hands lingering on Ingrid’s shin. Then he takes the bowl again, mixes the sauce. Gives Ingrid to try. Kisses her. She kisses him back.

‘Do you want some, too?’ Jonas asks, and Isak for a moment doesn’t know what Jonas means. Does Isak want – ‘Salsa,’ Jonas laughs.

‘Sure.’

Isak doesn’t like it, but he holds the spoon as if it was made of gold, and carefully licks all the sauce off it, lets it rest on his tongue before he swallows it. He doesn’t like it. He hates it. It’s worse than caramel candy floss.

They watch a movie later, a Woody Allen. Boring as fuck. The wavering light of the screen in the dark room, the air dense with the heat, and Jonas and Ingrid gross as fuck right next to him, all of it makes Isak feel sick. The salsa, too. He goes to the bathroom and doesn’t look in the mirror – goes straight for the toilet, kneels and puts his hand on the sides of the cold bowl. He could puke. He doesn’t. He closes the cover and rests his forehead against it, sighs in relief for its smoothness, for its cold. He wonders if Sara or Eva will knock on the door. If Jonas will. Nobody does. He sighs in relief for this, too.

 

After they packed their suitcases and emptied the fridge, and put the bike back in the tool shed, and closed the cellar – the bottles  already taken, after all this (Isak has been lying on his bed) they go on the terrace with the last of the wine, with Jonas’s guitar. We should play a drinking game, Ingrid says and Sara downloads a game app to her phone. As it loads, they take the last photos, flushed with the sun, the garden green, the girls posing and Jonas tuning the guitar. The game is boring – Isak doesn’t care for the girls’ secrets, and he knows all of Jonas’s.  The game is boring until Ingrid, with a new smile, reads,

‘Never have I ever hooked up with a stranger.’

Even Jonas’s head shoots up. It’s not what they do. Isak glances from Sara to Eva, and sees Sara smile, and Eva bite her lip. She checks it with Ingrid – did Ingrid say this?, and when Ingrid raises her eyebrows like,  go on, Eva takes the glass, drinks. Isak looks at Jonas, to see if he will laugh – but Jonas just waits, and not sure.

‘Come on,’ Eva says, too loud. ‘It’s not such a big deal, like -‘ she blinks. ‘I knew him. Kind of.’ She drinks again. ‘Whose turn is it now?’

It’s Isak’s. He doesn’t feel like it, still sick from the salsa, so he blurts out whatever,

‘Never have I ever touched an eyeball with my finger.’

The girls grimace, and almost miss Jonas’s picking up his beer.

Ingrid laughs. ‘What?’

They look at each other, Jonas and Isak, who will tell the story.

‘So, it was – first year of the primary, right,’ Isak starts. He’s right. This is right. ‘I uh, I had this nightmare all the time, that my eyeball kinda – flies off the socket?’

‘Just one eyeball,’ Jonas adds.

‘Just one.’ He’s happy Jonas remembers. He wonders how much of it he does. It was the first year of the primary and the centre of their lives was the centre of the playground behind the school. They were never chosen first to the teams, Jonas and Isak. Jonas was a weirdo, and didn’t lose the baby fat, Isak – he just fucking sucked. Couldn’t hit the ball right. But he went before Jonas, he was – like his mum said – bones and skin, nothing in between. He always had these visions of himself, of the perfect shot, the perfect score, of the arc of the ball high above his head. It never happened. Like, he didn’t know how to make his body move right. Limbs all over the place. And he worried, if he won’t lose the hold of them in the end, like his body would go to pieces, elbows here and knees there, and the eyeballs – just fly off the socket. Straight into the outer space. Frozen there. He told Jonas after a bad match, a match where Jonas just missed the ball and lost his team the deciding point. ‘And he like, went and licked his thumb and stuck it into my eye.’

He said: see, it’s here. Here and warm.

‘Yeah, that’s what I did. And you cried so bad.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And that’s how we became friends,’ Jonas grins, not at Ingrid, but at Isak.

‘Yeah. Like, if someone sticks a thumb into your eye, and you’re six,’ Isak takes a sip, wonders. ‘You hate them for the rest of your life, or – I said, you know, fuck it he’s –‘ He wonders. ‘He’s my bro now.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Jonas laughs. ‘You know, a six year old, he says, fuck it, he’s my bro now.’

‘Shut up!,’ Isak chokes on the wine, a little. But it’s good, it’s right, it’s a giggle that’s choking him. ‘That was the –‘ he coughs again. ‘The sentiment.’

‘The sentiment,’ Jonas drawls. ‘No, but I get that. You just know sometimes.’

‘Yeah,’ it comes off like a whisper. Isak coughs and goes for loud, for low. ‘You know once you have a spit on your eyeball. This is it,’ he waves his hand. ‘This is as good as it’s gets.’ It’s a joke, so they laugh.

‘The golden days,’ Jonas says. It’s a joke, too. Everybody laughs.  

 

He dreams of balls and cubes. Eye balls, cubes of air. They are material objects with physical properties and invisible borders – eye balls liquid and cubes of air gas. These objects are separate but bound together by forces and heat. A closed system. They are motionless, because the opposing forces are equal, so they hold the objects suspended. They will move only if you introduce a new force into a system, loose and wild, like a spirit or like a demon. Then, the bonds will break and the objects will be set adrift. They will hurtle into unpredictable directions with immeasurable strength. He dreams of balls and cubes, hurtling into space. The bonds break like strings of spun sugar, like shells and skulls.

 

He wakes in the darkest hour of the night, no light, just the lightbulb buzz. He gets up from the bed and goes into the bathroom to take a piss. He had too much wine. He thinks, balls, cubes. He thinks of the Passenger songs and the Bible verses. He thinks, _through the glass darkly but then marry you_. He doesn’t consider the door or the door handle, just opens it and then he sees Eva. She is leaning over the sink, hand on her face, face red. She is crying.

Isak hates it. He is turning, but then she sees him, too and makes a sound, the smallest sound.

‘What is –‘

‘It’s just,’ she wipes her nose with her hand. ‘My – here,’ she touches her belly, ‘like, period, it hurts.’

‘Okay.’

‘Um, yes and, I didn’t want to wake Sara up, so,’ she smiles at him, at the bathroom, at the mirror.

They are reflected both, Isak and Eva, face to face. Slowly he comes into the bathroom – the tiles are cold, this is real – and he touches Eva’s arm, and when she nods – the smallest nod – he hugs her. She’s shorter than him, just a bit, and her face fits easily into the space between his chin and collar-bones. He holds her and glances to the mirror, and at the two of them there. Two sets of reflections. He would give her a can of beer. He would speak, in a voice lower than his – he would say. So you are, like, in a grocery store and the world is ending. But you just pick your cereal, you don’t know, you don’t see. And just as you try to decide between Nesquik and Coco Pops, you glance up – it’s an accident, really – and you realize, there’s like, a wave – tsunami style – coming right at you. And on its swell, there is all shit the force of its movement pulled from the ground: broken folded chairs and broken fences, bushes and shell-hollow houses. It is coming right at you and you see it crash, the water and the trash falling down, down, down on you. So you know, it’s like, _what_ and then, _I don’t think I need the cereal anymore_ , and then, _oh fuck, I’m dead_ , except – you know. We aren’t – we never die, the world never ends, there is no mega-wave. But sometimes, when it feels like it, you would say, what, and then, but the cereal, and then, just then –

  * I wish I died.



 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwnUio3x6een97Qgy-e77MDaFV0X4m7N0. some associated material: http://zielenna.tumblr.com/tagged/shout-out-to-2013.docx.


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